The European Commission’s Directorate-General (“DG”) for Enterprise and Industry has initiated a “Public Consultation on Patents and Standards“, seeking to gather public input on the relationship between the standardization of technical specifications and related intellectual property rights. The comment period is open now through January 31, 2015 . The public consultation seeks comment

Back in December 2012, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice held a joint workshop to explore the impact that patent assertion entities (PAEs — or non-practicing entities/NPEs) may be having on innovation, competition, and the U.S. economy.  The FTC and DOJ invited the public to submit comments for consideration by the agencies, even extending the deadline for submission until early April.  All in all, 68 separate submissions have been received and posted on the FTC/DOJ workshop’s site.

The commenters represent a wide variety of industries and interests, and express divergent viewpoints and positions about the effects of PAE activity.  Many comments focus on the newly-reintroduced SHIELD Act.  Given that the main focus of this blog is on standard-essential patent issues, we won’t even try to give a comprehensive rundown of all of the comments — we’ll leave the focus on non-practicing entities to others.  But several of the comments do express particular concern about the interplay between PAEs, standard-setting organizations and standard-essential patents.  After the jump, we’ll discuss some of these issues that are being flagged as troublesome.


Continue Reading Public comments on FTC/DOJ Patent Assertion Entity Workshop include worries that PAEs may “game the system” of standard-setting and RAND licensing

FTCYesterday we covered several public comments submitted to the FTC by various professional organizations and trade/industry associations surround the FTC-Google consent decree.  Today, we’re here to tackle the submissions from several large companies that chose to comment on the FTC order.  These companies include Apple, Ericsson, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Research in Motion.
Continue Reading FTC-Google public comments round-up #2: Tech companies have their say

FTCWe’ve finally sifted through the many public comments submitted in response to the FTC-Google consent decree and proposed order.  As we noted Monday, over two dozen individuals, companies, and organizations representing a wide range of interests submitted comments.  Later this week, we will do a post featuring the details of some of the post submitted by interested companies, such as Apple, Ericsson, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Research In Motion.  But today, we are going to focus on the comments that have been submitted by other types of organizations, which include a veritable alphabet soup of interest groups, professional organizations, and industry or trade associations.
Continue Reading FTC-Google public comments round-up #1: Interest groups and industry/professional organizations weigh in

This past Friday (Feb. 22) was the deadline for the public to submit comments to the Federal Trade Commission on the FTC’s consent decree that it entered into last month with Google and Motorola Mobility.  More than two dozen individuals, companies, and organizations chose to submit comments, and their submissions reflected a wide range of interests and opinions about issues relating to both standard-essential patent issues and Google’s search practices.

These comments may be accessed from the FTC’s web site.  In a future post, we will do a deep dive into some of the more interesting comments submitted.  In the meantime, after the jump is a list of the entities that submitted comments, along with links to their web sites: